Gillian Kelly

At 73 years of age, Gillian found herself one day sitting in the central reservation on the A583 outside Cuadrilla’s fracking site near Blackpool, Lancashire, one arm locked into a steel tube and surrounded by police. She and others that day were later charged with obstructing the highway. Born and brought up in the Fylde in Lancashire, Gillian has been based in the English Lake District for more than 40 years. Following drama school in London she has had careers in teaching, as a vegetarian restaurateur and latterly retraining as a psychotherapist. She worked as a practitioner and trainer travelling between London and the Lakes for several years and is still practicing as a psychotherapist. In 2017 after learning about fracking, she encountered a ‘tipping point’ and became an activist, taking direct action, involving three generations of her family, to oppose the Government’s imposition of fracking as a national infrastructure project, overriding local democracy.